Abstract
Since the conception of pedagogical agents in multimedia environments, researchers have advocated for agents to be designed to exhibit social cues that prime the social interaction of the target audience. One powerful social cue has been agent gesturing. While most agents are created only to use deictic (pointing) gestures, there is recent evidence that agents that perform all gesture types (iconic, metaphoric, deictic, and beat) with enhanced frequency help foreign language users learn more procedural knowledge. Therefore, this research examines how all gesture types and different frequencies influence agent persona and learning outcomes when foreign language users learn declarative knowledge. The results indicated that the use of gestures, regardless of frequency, significantly increase agent persona. However, gesture frequency produced conflicting learning outcomes. While enhancing gestures were beneficial for cued recall and recognition, the average gesture condition was not, which indicates that the strength of social cues is important.
Highlights
After two decades of research on pedagogical agents in multimedia environments, meta-analyses and reviews provide evidence that agent presence is beneficial for learning outcomes (Davis 2018; Schroeder et al 2013; Wang et al 2017)
Research design and participants This research used a between-subjects experimental design to test whether the gesture frequency affected foreign language users’ social perception of the agent, and whether gesture frequency assisted with the recognition and cued recall of declarative information
From models (1) to (8), the evaluation of the no-gesture condition was significantly lower than the enhanced gesture and average gesture conditions for all of the agent persona subscales
Summary
After two decades of research on pedagogical agents in multimedia environments, meta-analyses and reviews provide evidence that agent presence is beneficial for learning outcomes (Davis 2018; Schroeder et al 2013; Wang et al 2017). The physical presence of the agent must provide social cues found in human-to-human communications. One of the early theories examining social cues, suggested that the image and voice activate social interaction schemas which allow for deeper cognitive processing by the users (Mayer et al 2003). While early research focused more on how voice (human vs computer) impacted agent perception and learning, later research began to explore the social cuing of the agent’s image. Mayer and Dapra (2012) examined the nonverbal communicative aspects of an agent with the embodiment principle, which proposes that agents that exhibit more human-like characteristics, such as eye-gaze, facial expressions, body sway, and gestures, help users learn more deeply when compared to conditions without embodiment. During the course of three experiments, the authors found that agents exhibiting high embodiment, the use
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